Quotes to inspire and reflect

It is the eye which makes the horizon.

The field cannot well be seen from within the field.

What you see, yet can not see over, is as good as infinite.

It is very much easier to divide your outlook on the world into two halves, to say that you know this belongs to the daily half and this belongs to the Sunday half.

A man must ride alternately on the horses of his private and his public nature.

God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures / Boasts two soul-sides, one to face the world with, / One to show a woman when he loves her!

The image of myself which I try to create in my own mind in order that I may love myself is very different from the image which I try to create in the minds of others in order that they may love me.

A man is like a bit of Labrador spar, which has no lustre as you turn it in your hand, until you come to a particular angle; then it shows deep and beautiful colors.

He was a lot like those Currier and Ives prints which, having outgrown them, one then laps the field of Sensibility to approach again from behind and see as “wonderful.”

Even after a bad harvest there must be sowing.

Perseverance can lend the appearance of dignity and grandeur to many actions, just as silence in com

To smell, though well, is to stink.

In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away.

The abuse of grace is affectation, as the abuse of the sublime is absurdity; all perfection is nearly a fault.

Perfection has one grave defect: it is apt to be dull.

Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see, / Thinks what ne’er was, nor is, nor shall be.

We shall never have friends, if we expect to find them without fault.

He whose preoccupation is with excellence longs fervently to find rest in perfection; and is not nothingness a form of perfection?

All mankind / Is born for perfection / And each shall attain it / Will he but follow / His nature’s duty.

The wise man, the true friend, the finished character, we seek everywhere, and only find in fragments.

The man who sees little always sees less than there is to see; the man who hears badly always hears something more than there is to hear.

Not only is there but one way of doing things rightly, but there is only one way of seeing them, and that is, seeing the whole of them.

Resemblances are the shadows of differences. Different people see different similarities and similar differences.

Some eyes want spectacles to see things clearly and distinctly: but let not those that use them therefore say nobody can see clearly without them.

Women see better than men. Men see lazily, if they do not expect to act. Women see quite without any wish to act.

The searcher’s eye / Not seldom finds more than he wished to find.

The Eye altering alters all.

The people, and the people alone, are the motive force in the making of world history.

Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in the world?

While the people retain their virtue and vigilance, no administration, by any extreme of wickedness or folly, can very seriously injure the government in the short space of four years.

We hold the view that the people make the best judgment in the long run.

The efforts of governments alone will never be enough. In the end, the people must choose and the people must help themselves.

The populace drag down the gods to their own level.

The public always prefers to be reassured. There are those whose job this is. There are only too many.

Civilization exists precisely so that there may be no masses but rather men alert enough never to constitute masses.

The instinct of the people is right.

Peace hath higher tests of manhood / Than battle ever knew.

The deliberate aim at Peace very easilv passes into its bastard substitute, Anaesthesia.

Peace is a virtual, mute, sustained victory of potential powers against probable greeds.

It is expedient for the victor to wish for peace restored; for the vanquished it is necessary.

Peace, like war, can succeed only where there is a will to enforce it, and where there is available power to enforce it.

It is better to have a war for justice than peace in injustice.

Because of the realities of human nature, perfect peace is achieved in two places only: in the grave and at the typewriter.

Peace demands more, not less, from a people. Peace lacks the clarity of purpose and the cadence of war. War is scripted: peace is improvisation.

Now we suffer the woes of long peace. Luxury, more savage / Than war, has smothered us, avenging the world we ravage.

My aunt once said the world would never find peace until men fell at their women’s feet and asked for forgiveness.

The passions that incline men to peace are fear of death, desire of such things as are necessary to commodious living, and a hope by their industry to obtain them.

Mutual cowardice keeps us in peace.